Thousands of Ware residents have demanded that councillors reject plans for a 1,500-home residential development on green belt land.

More than 20 residents attended the annual town meeting on Monday (23 April) where representatives from campaign group Save Ware presented councillors with a petition against the development, signed by almost 4,000 people.

The East Herts District Plan — which will provide a blueprint for development in the region over the next 15 years — has allocated land along the eastern and northern fringes of the town for new homes, two new schools and an employment area.

This will include “at least” 1,500 homes before 2033, with construction expected to begin between 2022 and 2027, and a “minimum of” 500 additional homes after 2033.

District councillors are expected to vote on whether to adopt the plan later in May, after the government’s Planning Inspectorate made a number of revisions to the council’s draft.

Read More

These amendments included increasing the number of new homes planned for the district by the year 2033 to 18,458, rather than the original target of 16,390.

Campaigners, who attended Monday’s meeting armed with placards and banners against the development, told the Mercury about their frustration with what they perceived to be “apathy” at the town council.

Karen Gray said: “We are their voters and we feel they should be supporting us, and leading up to this there hasn’t been much evidence of it. There’s been a lack of information.”

Emily Austin and Mike Pegram brought placards with them to the meeting

Ben Evans added: “We want to see engagement. We see only engagement from the current sitting mayor — we don’t see engagement from the other councillors.

“Apathy would be a good word to describe their response.”

Resident Julian Bond presented Save Ware’s petition to Mayor Alexander Curtis towards the end of the meeting to applause from the audience, while others handed delivered letters calling on Ware’s district and town councillors to do more to resist the adoption of the plan in its current form.

Read More

Julian said: “I think you could hear tonight that there’s this feeling from the town council that they will do their best but in the end East Herts District Council will make the decisions and they’ll walk all over them. It’s resignation, that they’re not able to do more.

“All I can do is encourage the ones who are on the district council to vote in the EHDC adoption process, and I encourage them to vote for Ware rather than the district as a whole.

“It was very apparent in the consultation that there are flaws in the district plan, and there are aspects that are being forced through by the central government, working through the Inspectorate.

Julian Bond presented the mayor with a hard copy of the petition, which had been signed by around 3,900 people

“All the numbers have gone up, they’ve added words like ‘at least’ to all the (housing) numbers and that’s an open-end, blank cheque to developers.

“On that basis there’s justification for refusing to accept it.”

Although Ware has 11 town councillors, it is represented by just seven at the district council level.

Two of them — Councillor Rosalie Standley and Councillor Phyllis Balham — were absent from the town meeting, and will receive letters from Save Ware at a later date.